


And He Wept for his Mother

by rebels



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Character Analysis, Character Study, Emotional Hurt, Other, POV Daenerys, i also don't like the way season 8 went down, i don't actually like this dany or this ship, it was tragic and twisted and ultimately her downfall, let it be known that i do not actually like daenerys nor do i like jonerys, so yeah be warned, this fic isn't about how beautiful jon and dany's love was
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-25
Updated: 2019-05-25
Packaged: 2020-03-14 16:24:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18951745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rebels/pseuds/rebels
Summary: Dragons die wondering why they loved.





	And He Wept for his Mother

Daenerys had a list of people she assumed she’d see when she died.

 

The list grew disappointingly as she moved on.

 

Those she never knew. Viserys. Drogo. Irri and Doreah. Barristan. Viserion. She arrived in Winterfell, then King’s Landing, leaving Jorah, Rhaegal, and Missandei in her wake. She was meant to rule the Seven Kingdoms, not mourn. Then again, none of them were meant to rule the Seven Kingdoms.

 

Regardless, dragons didn’t cry. It was a lesson she’d learned from Olenna Tyrell, actually, if the old woman had intended the message or not. The act of being a dragon deserved a verb of its own. If she had time to scour books of the ancient texts of Valyria, from long before her house had been slaughtered, perhaps she’d find one. If dragons didn’t cry then there couldn’t be a verb for it.

 

Perhaps _dracarys_ would do.

 

Dragons didn’t cry. Daenerys didn’t love.

 

She loved her children. She loved a few. But it wasn’t fairytale love, fantasy love. The sort of love that would’ve made Daenerys’ heart flutter during her teenage years, if her teenage years had been some sort of normal. Drogo had been gone for too long for her to love him. Daario wasn’t love. She didn’t know if he was still breathing.

 

Jon Snow was love.

 

It had never felt wrong. What they did on the ship, in the snow. The lingering stares, whether they be in the throne room of Dragonstone, in the room where she’d seen the scars that had been his death, where he’d called her _Dany_. That was love. He was.

 

It might’ve been the only thing that ever could’ve frightened her. The carved intricacies across his chest, deep, red, and ever-present. During their night on the ship, she’d run her fingers over them, gently. She wasn’t scared of the scars, nor the knives that had carved them, not even of the perpetrators, but of the idea that Jon Snow had died. The idea that she wasn’t a Red Priestess, and that if he’d bled out in her arms, she couldn’t have saved him.

 

When Melisandre had arrived in Dragonstone, she’d clearly known more than most. She’d known that Jon and Daenerys were fated to meet and fated to meet greatness, together. She’d said that she’d brought together ice and fire. Daenerys remembered. She remembered how she’d inclined her head. Yes, she was fire. She was an unquenchable fire that burned brighter than Cersei’s singular spark, soon to be snuffed out. She was a finer fire, made of white gold sewn into fabrics that symbolize power, underneath a crown of braids woven together with more gold, finer still. Even then, she burned brighter.

 

But how much had Melisandre truly known? Had she known that Daenerys would love him? Her blue eyes held more than Daenerys’, and yet the Khaleesi didn’t envy it. She couldn’t call it burdened, for the red woman’s eyes were too blue, too icy, and Daenerys knew nothing of ice. Nothing of pretty lies or bitter cold. She knew seething irritation and blunt truth, both of which threatened to spill over.

 

Daenerys prided herself on her lack of love, for if she loved a smaller man, then he would be exploited, and if she loved a greater one, she’d be subjected to the same behavior from the people who couldn’t accept that she knew High Valyrian. How was she a queen then? How could that be love?

 

Jon Snow wasn’t a smaller man. He wasn’t a greater man. He was a man, and it made him human.

 

 _Valar morghulis._ All men must die.

 

Perhaps Jon Snow belonged on her list as well.

 

They were the words that couldn’t escape her mind as she slinked into the crypts of Winterfell. All men must die, and they did. They died so easily. She skipped over the faces of women. Women didn’t die. Not in her memory, they didn’t.

 

She couldn’t tear herself from Jon, nor from Lyanna Stark.

 

It didn’t matter what she chose, she knew Lyanna’s eyes would follow her anywhere. Brown, she could tell. It didn’t matter if the pair before her was made of crumbling stone. They would always follow her, hating her. Hating her for what her family had done. Hating her for the brother she never knew.

 

Jon knew she was there by the echo of her shoes against the stone. She tensed as his head turned back to her. More brown eyes. Four was too many. She shrank slightly into the pure furs of her coat, enough to insulate her for forever. It wasn’t enough. Jon Snow was ice. Ice was cold.

 

“I was told that Rhaegar Targaryen was a decent man,” she said, stepping closer, her shoes still against the stone. “That he was kind. He was my brother, sure he was. I never knew him.” His gaze had long strayed from her at this point.

 

She wrapped her arms around him from behind. She didn’t need his eyes. She didn’t want his eyes. Not here and not now. “And still, he raped her.”

 

Jon doesn’t respond at first. She doesn’t expect him to because she knows his words will shatter her. How can that be? She is not ice. Fire cannot break. She doesn’t know. She doesn’t know many things.

 

She doesn’t know that Jon can break her. She doesn’t know how easily.

 

“He didn’t rape her,” Jon said. She looked to him, despite not wanting to. Lyanna’s lifeless stone eyes still bore into her soul. “He loved her.” The corner of her lip dipped. “They had a son before Rhaegar was killed. She bled out while giving birth and gave the child to her brother to raise as his ward at Winterfell.”

 

Daenerys’ arms fell to her side, though not of her own will. The glare burning a hole through her heart disappeared as Jon faced her completely, allowing her to catch the conflict in him. She hated herself as her eyebrows angled upward and the skin of her forehead folded. Dragons didn’t cry.

 

“My name-”

 

They didn’t cry.

 

“My real name-”

 

Daenerys didn’t know how to cry.

 

“Is Aegon Targaryen.”

 

 _Dragons didn’t cry_.

 

And she didn’t.

 

A storm began brewing inside instead, clouds filling her mind and thunder striking her chin. She’d told Missandei that all men must die. Missandei. Curse Missandei and her nineteen languages. It didn’t matter. One didn’t need High Valyrian to have _valar morghulis_.

 

She let the wind tear the braids from her hair that night. Without the seven kingdoms, she’d lost all battles and all Dothraki customs meant nothing to her. She let herself break as Drogon took flight, shaking dead men from his wings. She let herself stare into death’s eyes as she met his vessel.

 

She let herself cry over Jorah.

 

Curse Jorah and his loyalty.

 

She supposed dragons did cry.

 

She cried for Jorah and did not for Rhaegal. She only screamed in agony as the revelation that dragons cried blood knocked the wind out of her. She charged, none of the arachnid arrows even coming close to piercing her wings.

 

Curse Jaime Lannister and his companions with scorpions. Curse the ironborn, curse the maesters of the Red Keep. Curse all of them. She had promised that cities would burn to the ground and people would die screaming. She had never been so sure of herself and her damn _faith_. There were no gods. There was Daenerys Stormborn of House Targaryen, the queen who cried and shed blood. Gods banished to hell.

 

And curse Cersei Lannister for taking away yet another woman. A woman who couldn’t die and whose headless corpse fell before her feet. A present running red. It was twisted.

 

Daenerys walked away, the feeling gone from her feet and fingertips. She wanted to laugh at the irony of hearing nothing. Maybe then Jon wouldn’t have heard her shoes on the stone.

 

She wanted the numbness to be new, but it felt empty, and she knew it was old. The price of carrying the blood of Old Valyria. It was ice, originating in her heart, suffocating her via her lungs, and climbing up her throat. There was no fire roaring her stomach. No fire at all. Perhaps she was ice, in the end.

 

That night, she allows Drogon to burn her dress off of her outside Dragonstone. She drags her feet up the stairs to the palace, eyes blank. She lets her curls fall and vows to herself to never touch the braid bag hairstyle again, never to touch anything like that dress again. She reaches the castle eventually, thinking that if anyone confronts her about her walk, she’ll burn them alive.

 

Varys doesn’t. He betrays her as so many have. She burns him and doesn’t add him to her list.

 

Tyrion confronts her and it means nothing. She sentences Jon to serving under fear, hoping it will bring back fire, which it does not. It means nothing. She burns ships of men who she’s never seen the faces of. It means nothing. She torches the Golden Company and ignores the crumbling walls of the keep. Nothing.

 

Just as the toll of the bell means nothing.

 

It rings like Viserys’ golden crown against the dirt, like the echo of the closing door to Xaro Xhoan Daxos’ vault. Like the unsheathing and slicing of countless swords, whether through flesh, bone, or nothing. She never cared before, so why now?

 

 _Valar morghulis_.

 

She does it.

 

 _Are you happy now, Jaime Lannister_?

 

She burns them all.

 

She thanks the gods she doesn’t believe in for Grey Worm and names him head commander of her forces. She takes Drogo’s words and thinks of bleeding bodies as she does. She stares Tyrion dead in the eye.

 

The echo of his hand pin falling away, like his loyalty, is like the bell. Still, it means nothing. Why can’t she feel anything as he is led away? Why didn’t she have his throat cut when Jorah brought her to him? Why didn’t she cut him out, root and stem, as Samwell Tarly did to Jorah’s Greyscale?

 

As she ascends to the throne room, as she inhales the ash, as her fingernails finally hover over the throne itself, truly, not falsified by some wicked sorcerer's illusions, she feels. She feels relief, because, if not for only one day, she can breathe. She can rest. Maybe she can forever. Liberation surely can breathe as well.

 

Her breath hitches as her hand nears it.

 

She is complete as she touches it.

 

She is Daenerys Stormborn of House Targaryen. She is the Unburnt and she is the Breaker of Chains. She is the Mother of Dragons.

 

And completion is not enough to satisfy her.

 

Maybe Jon Snow is.

 

He is behind her and the ash is snow. It falls silently, gently, just as he had, just as he does. Maybe there’s still some of that there. She begged him. She forgave him. She loved him. She _loves_ him.

 

He loves her. She is his queen. If Drogon let him through then he must, she must be.

 

“I was told by my brother when I was a little girl that the throne was made by a thousand swords, all from fallen enemies, killed through the conquests of the Mad King.” She hesitates. “I suppose he was never quite mad to me. He was Aerys. To Viserys, he was Father.”

 

She wonders silently if he’d be proud. She wonders if she’s wrong. She wonders if he is Father.

 

She never has to turn. If Jon had never turned away from Lyanna Stark in the house of the dead in Winterfell then she wouldn’t have been here. The smallest misdirection changes everything, Daenerys has always believed that. Perhaps she should be thankful that Jon Snow is Aegon Targaryen.

 

She turns anyways. She wants to see brown eyes. They’re the ones that loved her brother and they’re the ones that love her. She loves them too.

 

She loves him. She loves Jon Snow.

 

The Queen of the Andals and the First Men is in love. A dragon is in love.

 

Olenna Tyrell knew that was possible.

 

“I couldn’t count to twenty until I was a bit older than my brother telling me that. How was I supposed to imagine the throne? What would it look like?” She heads down the stairs, away from the center of the platform, while Jon comes to meet her halfway.

 

She loves him.

 

“I imagined a heap, a mountain. A staircase that Viserys said he’d touch with the tips of his fingernails and that I never hoped to reach, not ever. There must’ve been more fallen enemies. There must’ve been more swords.”

 

She’s smiling.

 

He cuts her off.

 

“Grey Worm was killing Lannister soldiers in the streets, where anyone could’ve watched.” His tone was cold. He was ice, after all. “He said it was on your orders. Does he even need your orders if he commands your forces?”

 

She assures him. “It was necessary.”

 

“Have you been down there?” His tone climbs faster than Daenerys ever could’ve climbed her mind’s mountain of swords. “Have you seen it? Have you seen the dead? Children, little children, dead. Burned!”

 

She doesn’t break.

 

She is a dragon and she loves Jon Snow. He is a man who cannot break her.

 

“I tried to make peace with Cersei,” she amends. “The good people of King’s Landing knew who to blame when the sky fell. Isn’t that what we said would happen? They did.”

 

“You think the little girl I saw with her charred mother ever talked to Cersei?”

 

“She crowded them into her keep and still, they filled her city. She used their innocence as a weapon,” The queen says, resolve still firm. “What queen would do that? She thought it would weaken me.” He nods.

 

“Tyrion?”

 

“He lied to me, conspired behind my back, and made a mockery of me before my armies. I’ll do the same as you have done with countless others, even if it broke your heart. Even if they were children.”

 

“Forgive him.”

 

“I can’t.” _I’m not weak_. _I’m a_ dragon.

 

“You can,” he insists, taking another step to her. Is he pleading? Does he truly care for the life of Tyrion Lannister so much that he’s asking her to spare a traitor? Even in causing Varys’ death, Tyrion still was a traitor to her.

 

“You can forgive them all, make them see they’re mistaken, make them understand.” He grows more desperate, his words pointed, shooting arrows at her, aimed at her shoulders and landing at her feet. “You’re the queen. You’re my queen. Please, Dany.”

 

She wants to break, because it would mean that she was human too, and it was everything she loved about Jon Snow. But she can’t. Not even for him.

 

“We can’t hide behind small mercies. I can’t. I never have. That’s who people wanted me to be. They wanted me to smile while sitting behind leaders. _I_ was meant to be the leader. I was meant to rule always, Jon, I must rule.”

 

“We need mercy to make a better world,” he blinks repetitively, unable to meet her eyes until he finishes speaking. She moves closer. Why won’t her heart break?

 

She loves him.

 

“The world will be merciful, Jon,” she’s smiling, eyes widened. “People can’t imagine a world that’s never been before. A good world has never been. They’ve never seen it. I’ve only seen it in my dreams.”

 

“How can we know what it looks like if it comes? How do we know it will be good?” He whispers to her, his voice wavering and eyes trembling. Daenerys knows he wants so badly to see this world and all she wants to do is give it to him. He’s been so hurt by the world there was and she wants to strike it down because of that.

 

“Because I know what is good,” she says. She knows that she is human. And she knows that he is too. “And so do you.”

 

“I don’t.”

 

“You do,” she breathes, so close to him. So close to making herself known, to convincing him. “You do, I promise, you always have. You deserve to know that.”

 

“Other people think they know what’s good.” She wants him to stop talking like that. It can’t break her heart and that fact should break her heart on its own.

 

“They don’t get to choose,” she says.

 

She slides an arm around him, so close that his breath is cold. He places an arm on the side of her face, his expression unchanging in it’s hurt. She knows that hurt that runs as deep as the cuts in his chest can't evaporate. She does. She will change it as the queen.

 

“Be with me,” she smiles. She’s hopeful. She’s always known that she’d take the throne. She never needed hope for a fated task, only faith. But for the new world, and for Jon’s sake, she will have hope. “Build the new world with me. This is our reason, since the beginning and still. Since you were a little boy and I was a little girl who couldn’t count to twenty. We can do it together. We can break the wheel together. Love _together_.”

 

A Targaryen alone was a fate she’d never see if she was with Jon Snow. Daenerys had him.

 

She loved Jon Snow.

 

“You are my queen.”

 

She felt gentleness in her smile, her eyes.

 

 _She loved Jon Snow_.

 

“Now- and always.”

 

 _And he loved her_.

 

Their lips meet without her knowledge of who began it. The sound in her ears is an orchestra. Because perhaps with him, the wheels fragments won’t cut her hands. Perhaps there will be another guarantee that nothing can hurt her. Love can’t hurt her. She, Daenerys Stormborn, loves.

 

 _Love does hurt_.

 

She sways in his arms.

 

Her eyes flutter down, eyelashes coating them, and she doesn’t understand. She _can’t_ , because the fairytale love wasn’t like this.

 

She tries to breathe as she meets Lyanna Stark’s same eyes. Did Lyanna love Rhaegar? Did it hurt her too? Did it hurt her so much that she couldn’t stand?

 

Daenerys could only cry blood.

 

She could only be a dragon.

 

She couldn’t love.

 

Dragons didn’t cry.

 

Dragons didn’t love.

 

Love hurt her just as much as the scorpion in her chest.

**Author's Note:**

> A quick heads up in case you ignored the tags: I don't actually like Daenerys as a person/character, nor do I enjoy Jonerys as a ship. I especially didn't like how Season 8 went down. However, I was inspired to write a character study of sorts because this romance was set to fail and was ultimately what caused Daenerys' death. It was never good and it was never pure.
> 
> The study itself was prompted by me questioning why people ever saw this relationship as something that wasn't a downfall, and I continue to expand my writing skills by writing for topics that I might not necessarily enjoy.


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